Mod: A Very British Style by Richard Weight

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A cappuccino in Soho — rather than a real ale — was the height of Mod chicAlex Macnaughton/Rex Features

Will Hodgkinson

Published at 12:01AM, March 18 2013

The mod movement, which began in the early 1960s, must be the most unlikely
success story of all British youth movements. Starting out as an elitist
fashion cult for working-class teenagers, its death knell should have
sounded when minor skirmishes between mods and rockers at seaside resorts in
1964 became a moral panic, thereby turning what had previously existed as a
secret society into front-page news.

Somehow, though, the mod ideal and aesthetic never went away. Instead it
seeped into different movements, changed with the times, and became
increasingly difficult to define in the process. Richard Weight’s thoroughly
researched overview